Unit Details

Task Force 77

(Striking
Force)

Striking Force
(Task Force 77)

Various shoulder patches for TF-77.

June 25, 1950

The outbreak of war in Korea caught U.S. military services
in the midst of a transition. The establishment of the
Department
of Defense in 1947 and its
reorganization
in 1949 required readjustments within the services to which none had
become completely acclimated. Successive decreases in the military budget
and the prospect of more to come had reduced the size of all services, and
a reorganization of operating forces to keep within prescribed limits was
in process.

New weapons and equipment had not been completely integrated,
and tactical doctrine and new operating techniques for their most effective
employment were still being developed. This was particularly apparent in
Naval Aviation, where the introduction of jet aircraft had created a composite
force in which like units were equipped with either jet or propeller-driven
aircraft having wide differences in performance characteristics, maintenance
and support requirements, and tactical application.

Combat requirements in Korea were quite different from
those of the island-hopping campaign of World War II. Only the landings
at
Inch'ŏn, two and a half months after the shooting began, followed
the familiar pattern. The UNís intention to confine the battle area to the
peninsula resulted in a limitation of air operations in support of troops.
This was a normal enough mission for carrier air, but the need to sustain
it for extended periods over an extremely large landmass made quite a difference.

Carrier forces also flew deep support missions; attacked
enemy supply lines; roamed over enemy territory looking for targets of opportunity;
bombed enemy bridges; interdicted highways and railroads; attacked refineries,
railroad yards and hydroelectric plants; and escorted land-based bombers
on special missions. All were carried out effectively, but were new experiences
for units trained to interdict enemy sea-lines of communication and ward
off attack by enemy naval forces.

The see-saw action on the ground as the battle line
shifted and as action flared up and quieted again required great flexibility
of force and demanded the ability to carry out a variety of missions, but
after the first six months of the war, the overall air campaign developed
into a monotonous, although serious, routine. It was a battle described
by Commander Task Force
77 in January 1952 as "a day-to-day routine where stamina replaces
glamour and persistence is pitted against oriental perseverance."

Compared to World War II, Korea was a small war. At
no time were more than four large carriers in action at the same time. Yet
in the three years of war, Navy and Marine aircraft flew 276,000 combat
sorties, dropped 177,000 tons of bombs and expended 272,000 rockets. This
was within 7,000 sorties of their World War II totals in all theaters and
bettered the bomb tonnage by 74,000 tons, and the number of rockets by 60,000.
In terms of national air effort, the action sorties flown by Navy and Marine
Corps aircraft rose from less than 10 percent in World War II to better
than 30 percent in Korea.

There was another and perhaps greater difference between
the two wars. Support of forces in Korea required major attention from the
planners and of units assigned to logistic supply, but action in Korea was
only a part of the total activity of the period. Outside the combat area
fleet forces continued their training operations on the same scale as before,
and fleet units were continuously maintained on peaceful missions in the
eastern Atlantic and in the Mediterranean. Research and development, although
accelerated, did not shift to emphasize projects having direct application
to the war effort but continued on longer range programs directed toward
progressively modernizing fleet forces and their equipment with more effective
weapons. New facilities for test and evaluation were opened. Advances in
guided missiles reached new highs indicating their early operational status,
and ships to employ them were being readied. Firings of research missiles
like
Lark,
Loon
and
Viking from shore installations and from ships provided both useful
data and experience.
Terrier,
Talos,
Sparrow,
Sidewinder,
and
Regulus passed successive stages of development.

Research in high-speed flight, assisted by flights
of specially designed aircraft, provided data leading to new advances in
aircraft performance. The carrier modernization program continued and was
revised to incorporate the steam catapult and the angled deck, together
representing the most significant advance in aircraft carrier operating
capability since World War II. In a period when Naval Aviation was called
upon to demonstrate its continuing usefulness in war and its particular
versatility in adapting to new combat requirements, it also moved forward
toward new horizons.

Although early postwar policy had called for the maintenance
of two aircraft carriers in the Western Pacific, the reductions in defense
appropriations had made this impossible: for some time prior to January
1950 no carrier had operated west of Pearl; current procedure called for
the rotation of single units on six-month tours of duty. In these
circumstances Admiral Struble's Seventh Fleet Striking Force,
Task Force 77,
was made up of a carrier "group" containing one carrier, a support
"group" containing one cruiser, and a screening group of eight destroyers. The
duty carrier in the summer of 1950 was
USS Valley
Forge (CV-45), an improved postwar version of the Essex class, completed
in 1946, with a standard displacement of 27,100 tons, a length of 876 feet,
and a speed of 33 knots.

Flagship of
Rear Admiral John M. Hoskins, Commander Carrier Division 3, Valley Forge
had reported in to the Western Pacific in May, at which time her predecessor,
USS Boxer (CV-21),
had been returned to the west coast for navy yard availability.

June 25, 1950

Like all conflicts, that in Korea had its strange and
unpredictable characteristics. One of these was the fact that, so far as
control of the seas was concerned, the war started with the exploitation
phase. It was never necessary to fight the convoys through. But of this
no one could at first be sure, and with men and supplies in very large quantity
committed to the ocean highways, and with the extent of opposition doubtful,
insurance was necessary. To maintain sea control, should new enemy forces
choose to dispute it, further combatant strength was needed .

Yet almost all the fighting ships west of the continental
United States had already been committed. Statistically speaking, the division
of the Pacific Fleet in June between ships operating in home waters and
those to the westward was roughly an even one. One hundred and twenty-five
naval vessels of all types were based on the west coast while another 128
were scattered between
Alaska, the
Hawaiian Islands, the trust territories, and the Western Pacific. But
the statistics are deceptive, including as they do auxiliaries, small craft,
and local forces, and the distribution of major combatant types was very
different. Of 86 active units, three-quarters were based on the west coast
of the United States.

Of the three large aircraft carriers in the Pacific
Fleet , one was with
Task Force 77 and
two were in the
San
Diego area, where the Fleet's two escort carriers also based. The Fleet
contained no active battleship . Two cruisers were already at work in Far
Eastern waters and the remaining four were on the west coast. Of a total
of 57 destroyer types and 30 submarines, 12 and 6 respectively were operating
outside of continental waters, 12 and 4 were operating under ComNavFE .
Quite clearly any naval reinforcement had to come a long way.

Korean War

During the Korean War, Task Force 77 performed a number of
combat deployments, where it provided air support and performed interdiction
missions as part of the UN forces. Task Force 77 had carrier stations in both
the Sea of Japan (East Coast Task Force) and the Yellow Sea (West Coast Task
Force, designated Task Force 95), the latter consisting of carriers of the Royal
Navy, Royal Australian Navy, and USN escort carriers due to its proximity to the
People's Republic of China. Seventeen USN, one Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and
five Royal Navy (RN) aircraft carriers served in United Nations carrier
operations at some point in time during the Korean War.

Between conflicts, Task Force 77 was held in readiness for
supporting French operations during the siege of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, and off
Formosa (now Taiwan) during the several Quemoy-Matsu Crises. It also conducted
limited operations over Laos in 1962 and 1964 before the commitment of U.S.
combat forces to the Vietnam War. Prior to the Vietnam War, the location of
COMCARDIV FIVE moved between several Pacific ports and utilized rotating Pacific
Fleet aircraft carriers from the West coast of the U.S. as its flagship.